Hmm. Had Boston and Portland done that deal...and Boston had not traded away Joe Johnson for nothing... They could have a team of Chris Paul, Ray Allen, Joe Johnson and Kevin Garnett. A championship contender now with two great, young/youngish players for the future.
I remember this draft clear as day. It was the first time we had a top-3 pick in a long time. It was Portland who turned Boston down. He was pegged as too old as we were rebuilding from the ground up.
How would it have stopped us from getting Roy or Rudy? They were separate trades that had nothing to do with wins and losses. LMA and Oden on the other hand... maybe.
There are two lines of thinking: A) Dirk is a proven loser. or B ) Dirk is only 30. Why do people consider 30 to be "too old"? And he was frickin MVP only two seasons ago! I like our team as it is, but we'd have to think about it. Dirk is a perennial All Star and like I said, was MVP. But he's a proven loser when it matters. I say keep LMA.
30 is not too old, but since it will probably be at least a couple of more years before we're even seriously in contention for the conference finals that makes him 32 or 33 and I wouldn't expect there to be many more years left in his legs, then we're back to square one again looking for a power forward.
"Proven loser"? (shakes head) Sheesh, some of you guys, I swear. Yeah, he's had more than his share of choke moments, but geez, lay off and have a little class. Dirk's a cool dude and a great player. I would never consider that trade given the Blazer's window opening nice and wide soon...but man, just...man.
i disagree that the team is currently 2-3 years away from being a serious conference finals contender, but if you put dirk in aldridge's place the blazers definitely would be legitimate contenders to win it all this season. i don't see the trade being necessary though and i wouldn't want the blazers to make it.
He choked vs Miami and choked vs Golden State. In one of the big games in GS series, he only scored 8 points. I'm not saying he's not a cool dude. That has nothing to do with it. He's a proven loser. Not an opinion.
not true. against golden state, you can say he choked but i'd say it was more of a team and coaching effort. dirk definitely played poorly but it was also a terrible matchup for him. a team full of athletic guys with enough size to bother him defensively but that he would have trouble guarding. and instead of playing like they did over the course of the season that won them 67 games the mavs changed their approach and tried to play golden state's game by going small way more often than normal. so even though dirk played poorly, that series was lost as a team not by dirk. against the heat, he averaged 23/11. hard to really call that a choke even though his team lost. and yes, saying that anyone is a proven loser is an opinion. there are 5 guys on the court for each team at any time during the game. wins and losses come as a team. and really, dirk has been pretty successful there. i mean even though they lost to the heat, he did lead them to the finals against some pretty good teams.
Don't kid yourself. Portland wouldn't trade LMA for the aging Dirk. Dallas is close to rebuiding as the core they have now is a fringe playoff team. Oh!
portland would at least consider it. dallas wouldn't. the only thing that could maybe get dallas to think about it is that aldridge is from dallas but even then they would need more to give up dirk.
As Dirk ages his defense will get worse (even worse than it is now, scary thought.) A big no thnx to Dirk.
If Dirk isn't a proven loser then Kobe and Michael Jordan aren't proven winners. They just happened to play on good teams.
I don't agree. I don't think either side would consider it, just as Chicago wouldn't consider Rose for Nash, despite Nash being better right now. The window is wrong, Aldridge's youth changes the value equation.
Correct. Of course, Kobe and Jordan are/were superior players to Nowitzki. But they aren't "winners," and Nowitzki isn't a "loser." There's no winning and losing ability. There's just production (which I'm using to encompass offensive and defensive effectiveness).
had kobe and jordan not played with good players, they would have the "proven loser" label just like any other player would. it's a dumb label to give anyone and yes, winning and losing is much more a product of the team a player is on than that one player's ability. and how again does a "proven loser" lead his team to 67 regular season wins? or lead them to the finals over "proven winners" like the spurs?
I don't know... some of those Bulls teams were very mediocre as far as overall talent. Once you've gotten past Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman, the team was very average. Kerr was a good shooter, Harper was a decent scorer, but some of the guys they paraded out to man the center position were pretty terrible. Luc Longley... Jason Caffey... Brian Williams (Bison Dele)... Jud Buechler. Just a lot of role players that knew to get Jordan the ball.
